Vendors To Offer Biz Packages Major travel distributors, including the Big Three online agencies, see an opportunity to offer the corporate market dynamic packaging products in which the traveler makes a query and gets back a complete itinerary and total price. Following a late February comment in which Expedia CEO Erik Blachford suggested the company—a pioneering beneficiary of the merchant model for online hotel bookings—would introduce packaging to the corporate market, a Sabre executive last month made similar comments of GetThere. "There's no question that packaging is a real buzzword in the industry and, ultimately, GetThere will provide that to their customers as well," said Sabre's Ellen Keszler, who last month was named president of Travelocity Business.
Similar to name-your-price schemes, packaging sometimes masks the vendor name before the sale, making that part of the itinerary an "opaque" rate or fare. Concerned about weakening their brands by associating them with low rates, some vendors find it appealing to somewhat hide their true take from the sale. For corporate buyers, the slew of concerns includes identifying what travelers have bought and whether the company gets credit for the purchase, particularly since the merchant on the charge card statement may not be the transportation or lodging vendors themselves.
"It's a worthwhile experiment," said GetThere president Jeff Palmer, "but how interested are the corporations? The lower economics are attractive, but the branding and visibility or lack thereof mean the supplier reaction is less clear." According to Orbitz chairman, president and CEO Jeffrey Katz, "Dynamic packaging will remain at a relatively low volume for the business traveler. It will be modest, because there is too much inflexibility and opaqueness, but it will be utilized. We see it already today." Eastman Group president Richard Eastman said: "All travel but point to point, direct-booked air will become dynamic packaging in the next five to seven years.That means hotel, car, ground, restaurants, horses, cab fares."
Consultant Offers ACTE Members Free RFP ServiceSeeking to boost his service's value to fee-paying travel management company participants by increasing the number of buyers using it, consultant Ralph Brown is offering Association of Corporate Travel Executives members free access on his eBuyerSolutions.com procurement site. The agreement eliminates Brown's $495 fee and does not increase ACTE dues. According to Brown, the year-old vendor selection service offering electronic documentation and other tools gained 173 corporate users following its launch more than a year ago
(BTN, March 4, 2002). "We did get buyers to join at a slower pace than I wanted, but nothing in e-commerce balloons tremendously the first year," Brown said, noting the down economy. "We may be sacrificing some revenue, but we're building the viability of the site. No supplier has backed out." Brown said the site, which he stressed is not for auctions, now is processing about five RFPs per month and has handled 17 bids in total for agency and other vendors.
Amex, Orbitz, Others Articulate VoiceThere is a buzz again about voice recognition in travel. "We're very interested in digital voice response, or very high quality, intuitive digital voice recognition. It can be used for simple transactions like changes and cancellations," said Pam Arway, executive vice president and general manager for North America corporate travel at American Express. "We're not ready to migrate to that model tomorrow. I know airlines all are looking at it as well." According to Orbitz general manager of corporate travel David Cerino, Rosenbluth International's Upstream unit that supports Orbitz users does "a lot with telephony and interactive voice response to route business callers to the experienced agents." According to Eastman Group president Richard Eastman, "Interactive voice will be the next major transformation. Everything you can do online or wirelessly, you can do on your cell phone. What does that do to your corporate travel buying solutions?"
Southwest: Let's Keep Swabiz Free"We want to keep Swabiz a free product," said Southwest Airlines regional director responsible for corporate products Rob Brown, speaking in March at Corporate Travel World in New York. In addition, he said, "We're looking to address" a feature on the business booking site that would notify users of an available credit from an unused ticket. Brown said the carrier added a handful of features to Swabiz during the past year, including the option to retrieve and print documents required by airport security, a travel policy page, as well as options for changing an itinerary or canceling and refunding a ticket.